Monday, September 18, 2017

Weezer: A Tale of Two Black Albums

Which one should see the light of day first?

With Weezer’s 11th proper studio release, Pacific Daydream, set to drop on October
27, loyal fans who stuck with them long enough to enjoy their redemption over
the course of the last two albums might find a handful of reasons to scratch
their heads at things that shouldn’t be all that surprising. On the most basic level, listeners who
became complacent with the marked increase in quality of Weezer’s recent
records may wonder how the bottom could once again drop out with lead singles
“Feels Like Summer” and “Mexican Fender”. However, this becomes less of a shock
when one takes into account how few artists successfully recover from a
mid-career slump and actually give justification to the music press’ obligatory
comparisons to their classic period. Indeed, when adding the latest single “Beach Boys” to the
mix, the most surprising thing about the band’s return to vanilla becomes the
fact that it’s taken them this long to explicitly glorify the Hawthorne, CA legends in one of their songs. That being said, the rise and fall of
Weezer had already become a tired narrative by the time 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End showed
that they could still win over some of the “Matt Sharp or bust” crowd. As such, an aspect of this album cycle
worth paying more attention to is the non-release of a previously hyped Black Album.

Building up to Pacific
Daydream’s announcement, leader Rivers Cuomo had mentioned the forthcoming Black Album a handful of times in the
press. Speaking to DIY Magazine in April 2016, he predicted the follow up would
be “less summer day and more winter night” than the then-newly released White Album. While darker, more mature themes
and coarser language were projected, the band ultimately scrapped this pursuit
in favor of what became Pacific Daydream.
Clear details regarding the quantity of abandoned material, or whether any of
it carried over to the official product have yet to surface, but this change of
direction should also not surprise longtime fans of the band. After all, a
wealth of unused material has been the band’s calling card since at least as
far back as when the demoed concept album Songs
From the Black Hole was pushed aside in favor of 1996’s now-acclaimed Pinkerton. A few years later, over 60 songs would be rejected before
2001’s Green Album’s 28 minute
program was finalized, with the self-bootleg Summer Songs 2000 representing some discarded highlights that had
seen the stage. In a similar fashion, 2005’s platinum Make Believe arose from a stockpile of more songs than Weezer had
released to date. Though the sheer quantity of tracks left behind even halfway
through their career is staggering, the group’s productivity still grew to excess even past the
20 year mark, with approximately 250 contenders that didn’t make it past
pre-production for their White Album.
Clearly, Weezer is a prolific rock band who keep completionists hungry by the
change of their moods, but even if they’ve built a brand on color-coding
identically titled albums, it is still somewhat baffling why they would begin
work on a second Black Album before
even releasing the first.

Yes, between the Green
Album and 2002’s Maladroit,
another Black Album neared completion.
At this point in their career, though they had just lost bassist Mikey Welsh
(to what were long mysterious circumstances), Weezer was riding high on their
first of many comebacks, and were creative as ever. With a heavy touring
schedule sandwiching their studio dates, new material was tested out on the road, like Black Album tracks “So Low” and “We Go Together", as heard on their occasionally bootlegged October 2001 HBO Reverb special. Having momentum on
their side, work continued until November 2001, when a tentative 12 song
sequence was assembled. Perhaps
the group was unsatisfied with the performances or expected that better songs
would appear in short order, but for whatever still yet-to-be-explained
reasons, this album made it no further than this step in production. Soon
after, in December 2001, work on what would become Maladroit commenced. A majority of the original Black Album songs were also attempted
during these sessions, but only two (“Fall Together” and “Do You Want Me To
Stay”) would make it onto the released disc.Fortunately for hungry fans, Maladroit-era Cuomo took great interest how the then-recent popular
adoption of the internet could help bridge the gap between the band and their
followers, and several work-in-progress demos were leaked from the man himself,
including new versions of songs featured on the Black Album. However, by the time Maladroit was released in May 2002, the abandoned Black Album faded into obscurity for
good.

Enough time has passed since then for many fans to
reappraise Maladroit as a worthy
successor to the Green Album and a
hidden gem in the storied band’s cannon, though Weezer’s increasingly greatest-hits oriented concerts currently leave all but minor hits “Dope Nose”
and “Keep Fishin’” off the stage. The intervening years have also treated
listeners to variety of long-lost tunes, including some of Make Believe’s “Fallen Soldiers” on 2010’s Death To False Metal, and a complete (albeit discontinuous) release
of Songs From the Black Hole via
Cuomo’s Alone series of demo
compilations. It’s a testament to how low of a priority for the band the
original Black Album is that it
wasn’t revisited on the above archival releases, and that no questions were
raised when a second Black Album was
hinted at in 2016 speaks volumes of the press’ commitment to research on the
matter. With enough motivation, listeners today can approximate what the lost
record may have sounded like via circulating demos, but between Weezer’s
continued productivity and how overdue the deluxe edition of the Green Album is, a proper release of
2001’s Black Album doesn’t seem to
stand a chance in the foreseeable future.

Black Album (2001) : 11/3/01 work in progress track list (courtesy of weezerpedia.com)